Creative Family Fun

Are you tired of doing the same old things? Would you like some inexpensive ideas for family fun? Problem solved! Here is your guide to creative family fun year round!

• Camping: Have a family campout in your own backyard. Tell stories and eat snacks.

• Art: Enroll in an art class or other classes offered locally.

• Tubing: Go tubing down the Provo River.

• Night Games: Play night games like hide-and-go-seek, capture the flag, or commando.

• Serve: Plan a neighborhood service project and get the kids involved with the planning.

• Block party: Invite the neighborhood over for a game of volleyball, board games, or homemade ice cream.

• Cinematics: Make a family movie, music video, or a slide show that tells a story with still pictures.


• Olymipcs:Hold a family Olympics with madeup events and silly prizes or awards. Or you could set up a ropes course with a variety of teambuilding activities in the back yard.

• Water fight: Instead of sending the kids outside for a water fight, plan a surprise attack on the kids when they arrive home. Prepare water balloons, squirt guns, or garden hoses with sprayers. Provide an opportunity for the kids to counter attack and get in on the fun.

• Get moving: Go biking, rollerblading, or walking as a family. The Provo River Parkway Trail is a great trail to start out on.

• Local Events: Keep your eyes open for local pageants, festivals, events, parades, firework displays, etc.

• Outdoor fun: Have a family sock war. Or make flour bombs out of tissue and flour and have a war in the yard. (It makes a mess but is easily picked up.)

• Creative bowling: Go “Skittle bowling”: Take a bag of Skittles bowling and determine a different way to bowl for each color. For example, if someone draws a red Skittle, they bowl left handed, yellow could mean bowling backwards, etc.

• Geo treasures: Go Geocaching with your family. Or make a new cache and track it. Go to www.geocaching.com/faq to learn how to get started.

• Outdoor movie:Take a generator or laptop to the mountains and watch a movie in the outdoors. Bring plenty of blankets and be sure to have the laptop fully charged.

• Biking: Rent a tandem bike and bike around together.

• Boat race: Make paper boats and race them down the stream or gutter.

• Scavenger hung: Go on a photo scavenger hunt. Divide into teams and take pictures of things around town on a list.

• Mini golf: Make up your own miniature golf course in the living room and see how your family does.

• Garden: Plant a garden or flowers together.

• Visit a museum: Go to a local museum, planetarium, zoo, aquarium, or botanical gardens.


• Kite flying: Fly a kite and make your own if you want.

• Homemade pizza: Buy all the fixing to make your own personal pizzas.

• Silly savings: Go to the DI, Savers, or Arc and buy a game board or puzzle. Or give everyone a budget to buy a silly outfit to model in a family fashion show.

• Fondue: Have a fondue party in the living room.

• Ice blocking: Go ice blocking on a grassy hill.

• Bird feeders:Collect pine cones in the mountains. At home, add peanut butter and bird seeds to make inventive little bird feeders.

• Read: Sign up with the summer reading program at the local library.

• Ditch the TV: Go without TV for a whole day or week.

• Time capsule: Build a time capsule to be opened again only several years from now.

• Yard sale: Host a family yard sale.

• Cultural night: Hold a “cultural night” with everything the theme of a culture your family has special ties to or would like to know more about. Prepare food from that culture. You could also have the theme be based on a time period such as the medieval times or have a pioneer theme. Food could be prepared using techniques used by these peoples.

• Collage: Make a collage from old magazines, newspapers, or calendars. These could be used as decorations in the kids’ bedrooms and framed, or as personalized book or journal covers. They could be “laminated” with clear packing tape.

• More ideas: Go to “The Dollar Stretcher” website for cheap family fun activities: www.stretcher.com/menu/topic-d.htm#familyactivities.